Phoenix II: Sadler - Saturday media visit

Elliott Sadler, driver of the No. 19 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford
Fusion, is being sponsored by the Paralyzed Veterans of America this
weekend. As part of the Veteran's Day holiday, Sadler's car has a
special paint scheme that encourages fans...

Elliott Sadler, driver of the No. 19 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford
Fusion, is being sponsored by the Paralyzed Veterans of America this
weekend. As part of the Veteran's Day holiday, Sadler's car has a
special paint scheme that encourages fans to donate on behalf of the
PVA. Fans can text '4Vets' to 25383 to make a $10 donation, or can
visit www.pva.org/ttg for more information. Sadler spoke about what
this program means to him on Saturday at Phoenix International
Raceway.

"It's neat for me to be able to stand beside Richard Petty and address
the crowd and remind them of the vets and what they did for our
country. We just had Veteran's Day and we had a lot of people
sacrifice a lot of things in their life to give us the freedom and the
hope to do whatever we want to do in this country week in and week
out, and especially to be able to race like we are here this weekend
at Phoenix International Raceway. It's cool for us to be involved
with PVA, the Paralyzed Veterans of America because they do so much
for vets as far as rehabilitation, job searching and helping them get
their lives going in the right direction. Richard Petty leads so much
by example and it's so neat to be able to stand side-by-side with him
for such a great cause. Now we're getting the fans involved in it and
NASCAR fans are the best. Anytime you call or need some help,
especially with some charity stuff, they're always the first to jump
in line and do what they can to help. This is a great weekend for
us."

DO YOU HAVE ANY VETERANS IN YOUR FAMILY? "Oh yeah. I
definitely have family that served in a couple of different wars and
they've given their time and commitment to different branches of the
Armed Forces. I had a stint with the U.S. Air Force for a couple of
years back when I drove for the Wood Brothers and now we have the U.S.
Air Force again on the car this year with the 19 car, and now the
relationship we have with the PVA. I definitely have a lot of
different connections in a lot of different areas and have met a lot
of cool people that have fought for our country and given up their
lives to help others. Everytime I tell people, if you can just take
the time to say thank you to a man or woman in uniform, it just means
so much to them. It was a part of my family and I think it's a part
of a lot of people's families across the United States and it's
something to definitely be proud of."

YOUR FUSION HAS A NEW LOOK AS
WELL THIS WEEK. "It's beautiful. It's awesome. They did a great job
with the design of it. It's with and Carolina Blue, which I'm very
happy about that. It shows up pretty well on the race track and more
than anything to have that Veterans name and logo on our race car is
something to be proud of. It's something our team can cherish and say
we were a part of helping vets this weekend."

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT
THIS WEEKEND ON THE TRACK? "We've seen a lot of emotion in our sport
the last couple of weeks and we've seen a lot of jawing going back and
forth, and I think this is part of that 'boys have at it' mentality
that we talked about even before we went to the Daytona 500. Even
guys and past champions that are not involved much more in the chase
like a Jeff Burton and Jeff Gordon showing their emotions at Texas, to
the three guys that are in the chase right now. It's great racing. I
think this is the best year we've had in a long time as far as being
competitive on the race track with a lot of different winners and a
lot of different guys sitting on poles, a lot of different guys
leading laps and definitely the closest race we've had so far in chase
history with three drivers. So there are a lot of cool things going
on right now. Phoenix is a very tough race track to pass. Track
position is very, very important. The three guys in the championship
chase didn't qualify as well as they probably would have liked, so pit
strategy is going to be very big on Sunday. Who knows? That's why we
race. These guys are gonna have to race hard and who knows who is
gonna come out with the points lead on Sunday night? We don't know."

YOU WILL HAVE TO PASS SOME CARS TO GET TO
THE FRONT AS WELL. HOW CAN YOU DO THAT HERE? "You've got to have a
fast car and you've got to be able to turn under the guys in turn one
and two and have good forward bite off. We might try some two-tire
stuff. We might try staying out every once in a while - any little
thing on a short track is definitely magnified because of track
position. If you watched our qualifying times, this is the closest
qualifying field we've ever had on a mile track in NASCAR history, so
the competition is very tight. All of the cars are running pretty
close to the same speed, so track position and strategy with the crew
chief is gonna make a difference on Sunday."

WHAT SHOULD THE FANS
LOOK FOR TOMORROW? "This is close quarters racing. This is a narrow
race track, especially coming off of turn four. They're gonna see a
lot of paint being traded and I think they're gonna see a lot of sheet
metal being bent by the end of the day. But I think it's gonna be
neat as far as the championship side of it, you're gonna see who is
gonna be conservative, who is gonna play defense, who is gonna play
offense. From the rest of the field, we're getting towards the end of
the season and everybody wants to try to get a win and make a
statement to make their teams feel better going into the winter, so I
think you'll see a lot of aggression out there - a lot more taking
than giving - so it should be a very good race here at Phoenix. The
track gets very slick during the middle of the daytime. The groove is
really wide now in turns three and four, so I think you'll see good,
hard racing and you're gonna see some attitudes and I think you'll
still see that emotion like we saw last week at Texas."

MAYBE YOU CAN
SLIDE YOUR WAY PAST EVERYONE AND GET IN VICTORY LANE. "That's my
plan. We're gonna go and run the best we can. We are in a position
where we can take chances and throw caution to the wind and whatever
happens, happens. That's the attitude we're gonna have."